


London Bridges

by rowofstars



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:43:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Alice Morgan and her relationship to John Luther set during series 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	London Bridges

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for series 1 of Luther. I wrote this back in 2011 when this show was amazingly new and for a few weeks my absolute everything. I've started to move things from LJ to here because, well, LJ is a wasteland. Also, for my lovely friend Angie B, because my love of this show is all her fault. The fact that I understand a high functioning sociopath with a side order of malignant narcissism should bother me, right?

_She didn't fall down the rabbit hole, she jumped. He on the other hand, was pushed. We’re all mad down here._

 

 

They are not friends. 

He tells her this at every turn, in the moments when she seems most like a human being, but she likes to think in some way they are. There is still that part of her mind though, able to separate the narcissism from reality and understand that for her he is a curiosity, a function on the other side of her equal sign. She thinks maybe he can be the thing that balances her. For him she is the one that got away, for now. He can’t prove her secret, though she wears it on her sleeve for him, but he knows it to be true all the same.

Still, there are many things John Luther doesn't know about Alice Morgan.

The most important: she killed her mother first.

 

 

 

They want a sweet, loving and dutiful daughter who will help her mother in the kitchen and fawn over her father’s poetry. They want a school teacher, or a writer, and grandkids, someone who will care for them in their old age.

Instead they end up with her.

Contrary to the assumptions they do not make her who and what she is. It is a quirk of genetics, a one in a million; at best an enigma, at worst a sociopath, though they comprehend none of this. Her teachers say she is gifted, insist she be given every opportunity to succeed. What they aren't saying is that they are terrified and just want her to be someone else’s problem.

The praise is nice, albeit unnecessary. Her sense of self, perhaps deserving only in her own mind, is a product of her perception, not of the acts of others. It’s as simple as _knowing_ she is smarter, prettier, better, than all of them. These are not subjective things she assumes about herself; they are simply facts, constants, like the speed of light or the elementary charge _e_.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Morgans. Douglas does not beat his wife nor molest his daughter. Laura does not ignore any abuse nor treat her child with anything but love and devotion. There are none of the usual motivators, no sensational theories, no obvious explanations. The simple fact is that they no longer serve any purpose in her life. But that alone is not enough.

She has just always wondered if she could.

 

 

 

His name is Jimmy and he lives two houses down on the other side of the street. He’s nineteen and fumbling, she’s sixteen and knows exactly what she wants when she pushes him down on the sofa while his parents are out of town. She rubs along the zipper, pressing insistently against him. He groans and she wants to laugh.

She fucks him with her shirt on, his hands grabbing at her breasts, her hips, her hair, and she lets him. He doesn't hit her deep enough to make her moan, but she does anyway to the rhythm of her own fingers. The gasps are all him, pushing and sliding, slick inside her, and she tightens around him, practiced and perfect. She came minutes ago, not that he would have noticed.

Later he kisses her in the kitchen, too wet and hot and she bites his lip hard enough to bleed. It’s her first taste.

 

 

 

He lets himself in, somehow completely comfortable with the fact that he’s here, though it’s not as if there are many places for him to hide. The silk and lace surprises him a little, too delicate and feminine, things that she isn't or that he won’t let her be. He doesn't miss the tweezers clutched in her hand. 

He watches as she makes tea, as she replaces the milk in the refrigerator, as she leans against the counter. Her movements are too quiet and effortless, her eyes too bright for the late hour. He remains suspicious. She thinks this is why she might like him. He thinks this is why he might respect her.

When he tells her about Zoe and Ian the shift in her expression is too real to be rehearsed and it pulls at him in an odd way.

They look out into the city, at the lights scattered over the buildings. She stands straight and square, out of habit, staring at him openly. The weight he carries is something she can’t understand, but she can see it in the lines of his face and the sag of his shoulders against the chair.

Her head tilts. “Why are you here?” She’s asked that question three times already. His answers have yet to satisfy.

He sighs and rubs his eyes, but doesn't turn away from the view. “I told you. I needed a safe place to think.”

“Is that what you do?” She steps away from the window and slides sideways into the chair across from him. “You analyze things to a ridiculous point, agonize over your decisions and let them eat you from the inside out?”

His eyes flick from the window to her face and back.

She takes a slow sip of tea. “Why?”

It seems to be her favorite question and he sits up, turning to bend over the table, arms stretching over the surface. His folded hands almost touch hers where they wrap around the side of her cup.

“Because that’s what people do.” Though he knows no one does it quite to the extent he does.

She finds it curious how he can seem so much like her, yet it’s so easy for him to be like the rest of them. She wonders why she is different from everyone else.

“Is it?” He glances up and she looks him straight in the eyes. “I never have.”

He is unsurprised. “I know.”

 

 

 

The funeral is small and on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

She doesn't go. 

It seems wrong somehow to stand over the black freshly turned earth and pretend she cares while the minister reads from Psalms. She will not mourn them or think of them as anything but people she used to know. The feel of the gun in her hand, the weight, the click, the slide, the noise, those are what she will carry with her.

She lifts the lid of the urn and smiles fondly at the charred remains of her misdeeds. Her fingers sink into the gritty ash, her palm closes around the melted plastic, its edges smooth and round against her skin. She closes her eyes for a second and remembers the warmth of the blood, the heavy metallic smell and the way it clung to the air. Exhaling, she opens her eyes again and replaces the lid, before moving to the kitchen to wash her hands. The grey streaks the water, swirling its way down the drain. She sighs.

She will miss the dog.


End file.
